Older blog entries for cmiller (starting at number 52)

Ah, it's been a while!

I haven't been silent, just talking to myself. I have a machine I'm intending to put on the 'net, and I've been recording my thoughts there. It's not accessable from the 'net, so the log is more of a "diary" than a "blog", I guess. Nothing wrong with that! I'm not that interesting anyway.

I am really impressed with Zope and its "TAL" method of creating pages. I was a bit unimpressed with TAL's predecessor, "DTML". It seemed really PHP-like, which made my skin crawl.

In any case, with Zope, I'm used the ZWiki product to replace my MoinMoin instance, mostly because starting up a python interpreter on a Sparcstation 10 for every request (MoinMoin currently doesn't run under apache's mod_python, unfortunately) was worse than painful. It would have been slightly faster to have a Pentium2-400 on the moon and wait for the round-trip. Using Zope and ZServer makes it reasonably fast, so the $5 I paid for the Sparcstation isn't a waste after all.

After "mastering" ZWiki, I implemented a MoinMoin Markup mode, to save me the time of converting all my pages to "Structured Text". After that, I realized that with a little bit of code, I could make a Blog out of such a wiki, so after writing just a smidgen of code, really simple things work really well. Zope is pretty neat.

The amount of time I have to fool around should give you a hint as to my job situation. I hope to be doing something productive soon. Nothing for a while and suddenly a few nibbles at once. Wierd.

I envy MichaelCrawford and his ability to strike out on his own and do cool stuff. I'm too afraid of failure, I think, to take such chances.

Though, here's a parallel of Michael's 11 Jan 2003 entry that I inserted into my own diary on the 4th:

Today's I love you (but you're a bit nuts) moment came when Mary Ellen and I are cooking in the kitchen and snacking. I told ME that containers of pistacio nuts have a built-in learning curve. "See," I explained, "the nuts arrange themselves according to their density because they're all about the same size, so that the ones with looser shells -- that is, most air between the shell and the nut -- are at the top, and the really hard ones to open are at the bottom. A well-shaken jar should teach anyone how to eat pistacios."

There's an awkward silence while ME thinks of some way to respond. Nothing pertinent yet couth seemed to come to mind, so she smiled dimly and "I love you. Here, taste this soup."

I love my country's principles, but my country has done evil things.

History Lessons

170 years ago, as new settlers into the United States claimed more and more land, the presence of Natives already dwelling on land the settlers wanted was inconvenient, to say the least, to the white settlers. In 1830, the United States' Congress passed the Indian Removal Act (which proposed exactly what the title sounds like), and President Andrew Jackson promptly signed it into law.

The Cherokee of northern Georgia, the principal target of the legislation, a group 17,000 members strong, were not a group of savages. Years before, they saw the value of many European ideas and adopted a representational government and designed and used a new writing system, all within a few years.

The Cherokee petitioned the courts, and in 1832, won a case in the U. S. Supreme Court, acknowledging the Cherokee as a soverign nation, rendering invalid the laws that would force Indian's removal. President Jackson, referring to Chief Justice Marshall, said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it, if he can!"

The executive branch eventually tricked a small group of Cherokee into an illegal treaty that signed away their lands, and the Cherokee were driven at bayonet-point from Georgia to wastelands in Missouri and Arkansas. 8,000 died in transit, and the survivers fared poorly. Now, the Cherokee are virtually nonexistent.

commentary

A moral government would have respected the property claims of the inhabitants, and offered citizenship, and representation and participation in government. A moral government would have respected the Cherokee Nation's "right to exist."

The Cherokee were totally peaceful, and were wiped out.

bgeiger: Oh yes. Funny -- a friend of mine pointed out at the time of The Name Change, that "Volaris" sounds awfully close a Latin word for "fleeting", "ephemeral", or "volatile". You're out of an ISP; I'm out of a job. I'm sorta glad. Sic transit malia mundi.

Ah, I set up a Wiki Wiki (the 'MoinMoin' Python implementation) to play around on, until I get enough there to make public.

The New Yorker's "Shouts and Murmurs" section has an uproariously funny article, called The Duel. I conjure thee to Read'st it soonly.

I'm sure there's a word for it: What is it called when a company lays-off all its employees, and sells off all its assets in order to pay back VCs, so that it can then claim bankruptcy to get out of many many long-term contracts? I'm sure there's a word for that.

On a completely unrelated matter, I'm looking for new employment after joining my current employer exactly four months ago. This should be fun. Maybe I'll abandon this high-tech industry and help Chris make and sell mail-order smoked meat.

tk wrote in response to my "Our sloppy and slipshod treatment of Science has [...] caused other countries' students to outstrip our own in technical competence.": Hey, that was bogus! [...] Then again, playing on fear sometimes does work..

A scary postulate isn't automatically an appeal to emotion, but yes, I was trying to pit patriotism against the Board's actions. If they could think clearly enough to sniff that out, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in.

Advocacy

Yes, but not Free Software advocacy. It's much more important than that.

The Cobb County Board of Education decided to insert an "Evolution is not a fact" disclaimer in their biology textbooks. Here is the letter I wrote them this morning.

From: Chad Miller <cmiller@surfsouth.com>
To: Chairman <JCL19762@cobbk12.org>, "Mr. Tippins" <lindseyatippins@cobbk12.org>, Vice-Chairman <OGF16519@cobbk12.org>, "Ms. Gray" <GB111730@cobbk12.org>, "Ms. Searcy" <laurafsearcy@cobbk12.org>, "Mr. Johnson" <JJM17920@cobbk12.org>, "Dr. Plenge" <teresafplenge@cobbk12.org>
Subject: theories and prevarication
Date: 26 Aug 2002 09:42:55 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0

Mr. Chairman and Board,

Science is a diffcult subject to teach. In the same way many students have troubles with Algebra, the realm of Science has a layer of abstraction from the immediate physical world that a lot of students don't understand. Many people see "weird" phenomena (static electricity, dazzling chemistry, et c.) demonstrated and called "Science," and that causes them to associate "Science" with the "magical" events that they don't understand. Unfortunately, many never discover that events are understandable, and that the scientific world isn't composed of arbitrary ideas created by Man.

I understand that you, the board, have many constituents that want you to set the science cirriculum to disavow the truth of evolution. It is unfortunate that teaching of the knowledge we have accumulated isn't immune from the politics of Man -- but of course as a school board you know that.

Your constituents entreating you to set the Science cirriculum are the students that never understood Science. They are the ones who misunderstood the process of Science and think that Science's seemingly arbitrary ideas are replacable with ideas they've decided are correct.

When paleontologists, biologists, and other practioners of the "Hard" Sciences use the word "theory", they are NOT making a statement about their level of conviction about the truth of the matter. A theory is not a supposition, guess, conjecture, or result of rolling dice. Many laymen use the term "theory" incorrectly, and when they hear of the Theory of Evolution, they decide it is just as valid as their own kooky "theories" of black helicopters, fluoridation of water, the designated hitter rule, or the origin of Tang. "One theory is as good as another, right?"

Remember your middle-school math that taught you that in a right- triangle, the square of the length of the longest side (hypotenuse) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides? That principle is called the Pythagorean _Theorem._ Would the Board consider altering Math texts if a vocal group of constituents offered a conflicting "theory" based on faith to rival Pythogoras's triangle theory? I suppose not, but why would the same board treat another threory with prevarication?

Our sloppy and slipshod treatment of Science has adversely affected our understanding of the world and caused other countries' students to outstrip our own in technical competence. Further diluting and obsfuscating the nature of Science is exactly the wrong way to behave.

My health appears to be as good as I could expect, and Mary Ellen is moving down soon, so things are looking up.

I'm busy indoctrinating Stu with Lisp. He's excited about it, and I too am learning a bit about creating a medium-sized project with it. I'm also playing with mod_python and postgresql, to keep my knives sharp. I have to, as I'm programming Visual BASIC Script at work, and it makes me feel dirty.

Oh, dear -- a lot has changes in the (long) interval since my last entry.

I accepted a job north of Orlando, Florida. It's with a company with which I've worked before, under a different name (the company, not me). My wife is still "at home", until we get the house sold. My place to live is an apartment nearby. It's hard going back to living in a small place that someone else ultimately controls, from owning a fairly large house.

My new job involves (re-)learning BASIC. I'm no beginner, and it's far from all-purpose. Still, there are plenty of interesting problems around to solve; I don't own any, but I get to toss in my hat when walking past interesting discussions. I've managed to stir the status quo and break up some prejudices, and that makes me happy.

In the last month, I met Michael Piefel, a Berliner in town for a conference that had "Informatics" in the title. We found a pub downtown that he was familliar with and sampled a few beers. I'd much rather the Linux socializing meme use tea than beer, but alas....

Will Newton's clisp package is ready for another upload, but I can't seem to find the time to inspect it. Dang!

jcv decided not to attend school nearby. I'm disappointed that I won't be able to see him very often.

My friend Rochelle's mother has cancer. She supposed to have surgery soon, to remove it. I had breakfast with Rochelle and Ryan last Saturday. They caught Mary Ellen and myself leaving town. It was very nice to see them.

Speaking of cancer, it's been almost exactly two years since my own treatments started, and almost a year and a half since they stopped. I have a follow-up appointment at the end of this week. I very much hope the strange tightness in my chest is stress. I'm not sure I can do that again. No, I can do it, if I must. I will. ...but I hope I don't have to.

I haven't been kite-flying, yet. I'm too far inland to get the characteristic sea-breeze that makes kiting so much fun.

I've read with interest the discussions of document preparation in the diary logs. I'm an advocate of Docbook, and sgml in general. Anyone who looks at the source and doesn't see whatever format they want in output either doesn't have enough imagination or they don't understand the tools available to process SGMLs. DSSSL and XSLT aren't hard to learn at all. Heck, I marked-up the entire <u>The Lord of The Rings</u> into Docbook and used XSLT to distill it into source for a compiler for a PalmOS book reader, PalmReader. Easy.

Man, It's hot here in Orlando! There ought'a be a law!

I uploaded (to Debian Sid) Will Newton's clisp package. Will will make an excellent Debian guy, IMO. He seems adept, both technically and socially. I sent to his Application Manager my seal-of-approval.

kiting

A few weeks ago, I went on vacation with Mary Ellen, spending a lot of time on the South Carolina coast. After a few days, we ventured inland, to Charleston for an afternoon. After exploring for a few hours, I stumbled upon a kite store. Having envied another vacationer's kite all week, and thinking that wasting all that kenetic energy seemed somehow immoral, I bought a blue and purple canvas box-kite. I really enjoyed using it for the remaining couple of days of vacation.

Now, I'm chasing a job to Florida, where there be wind like sunshine, and the prospect of being able to kite again has me excited. I've used plain diamond-and-tail [I'm sure there's a real name -- I'm still learning] kites in the past, and once a "stunt" kite, but I was pleasantly surprised with the good flying behavior of the box kite. It tends to draw a crowd of people (admittedly more hairy old guys sipping domestic beers than bikini-clad females) who aren't sure that there's some trikery taking place with such an awkward-looking device in the air.

Anyway, with such a supply of wind readily available, I think I'll take up building my own kites. I've tried in the past, back in Thomasville (where the wind notably doesn't come sweeping down the plains), to build and fly a rokkaku:

I was feeling ill from some evil medicines administered a few days previous, and I was determined to build something to keep my mind off feeling bad. I endured a WebTV interface to download plans, and spent the rest of the afternoon improvising parts into a reasonably convincing imposter for a kite. I trudged out to an open area, where there was a little breeze, and let a gust of wind take my kite up about 25 feet. The gust subsided, and my kite, evidently too embarassed about its making and appearance, dived to the ground, committing suicide. I was exhausted anyway, and went back inside to take a nap.

Anyway, now I can do that every day! Well, I think it will go better since I'm not home-bound and I'll have more to work with than yardsticks, garbage bags, twine, duct-tape, and no wind.

It seems there's a lot of popular kite designs out there. Perhaps I'll find some seasoned kiter to give me advice when I need it.